For David Wax, all roads lead from Mexico
You must change your life.
David Wax heard a voice whispering this command to him during a summer trip to Mexico in 2001.
“That’s when I first heard Mexican folk music, Son Mexicano, and this particular style called huapango music,” Wax told the Herald. “At that moment, I felt a deep resonance with the music but I didn’t know it would change my life.”
Since that first trip, that command has pestered Wax. It nagged him after he graduated from Harvard in 2006 and headed back to Mexico for a yearlong fellowship to study regional folk. It may have nudged him to build with bandmate and wife Suz Slezak a barn in Charlottesville, or pushed him toward his relationship with Slezak.
Wax gave the words their due in the title track of new David Wax Museum record, “You Must Change Your Life.” It’s a record that charts his deep love for and complex relationship with Mexican folk.
“(After studying music in Mexico) I felt like I could bring all these instruments and influences and rhythms and song structure back to Boston and into my artistic life,” he said ahead of his band’s May 4 show at the Somerville Armory. “If I hadn’t gone to Mexico, I wouldn’t have gone down this path… I would have taken a much more safe, secure and practicable path.”
Over a decade, Wax has explored overlaps between Mexican and Appalachian folk, roots music and forward-looking indie rock — good David Wax Museum entry points from its early catalog are “Born With A Broken Heart,” “Harder Before It Gets Easier” and “Guesthouse.” “You Must Change Your Life,” which is out May 5, embraces this same kaleidoscopic approach where centuriesold acoustic instruments mix with feverish electronic production.
But Wax has never explicitly conversed with his muse as directly as he does here (he even has a tune titled “Back to Mexico”).
“There are whole songs that are explicitly about (my relationship with Son Mexicano) and songs that use the music as the template that very much sounds like our own interpretation of what it’s like to bring that music to this indie rock, indie folk context,” Wax said.
He adds that he is very aware that he has a privileged relationship with this music saying, “I try to be aware of the legacy of what it means to carry a folk tradition through centuries and not lose sight of that as I go on my own artist journey with this storied tradition.”
“You Must Change Your Life” also devotes a lot of time to another muse, romantic and musical partner Slezak. A big chunk of these songs are about quietly pining for someone or those strange hours where two people circle each other before declaring their love or the moment they crash headlong into a relationship. Like a million wonderful songs before them, they chronicle love, lust and heartbreak.
“If I were to tell you my life story, I would have to tell you two stories that became one,” Wax said. “Through the music I met this woman, and then we developed the band’s sound together… I envisioned this integrated life of romance and family and art.”
And he integrates it all on “You Must Change Your Life.”
The lesson is clear. When life or art or a voice from the universe commands you to change your life, listen to it. Oh, and then make an album about those changes.